For real estate agents, the three top considerations are “location, location, location.” But when it comes to marketing and networking your business, you need to remember “consistency, consistency, consistency.” Your job in marketing your practice is to build brand awareness. I know that sounds totes corporate, right? Like I instantly think of Coca-Cola, Toyota, and Nabisco. We’re not selling nilla wafers (um, yum!), but just like that yellow box of our favorite childhood cookie immediately conjures up fond memories of snack time, we want people to be given the cue “helpful mental health providers” and immediately think of us. We want them to associate our “brand” with trustworthiness, service, and expertise. For mental health providers, that’s what brand loyalty means: we are thought of often, quickly, and with positive regard.
While we learn a lot about how to be useful experts in graduate school and through all of our work experience, instilling that image to our target audience so that we are thought of quickly, frequently, and consistently requires a systematic approach.
Marketers know that it takes, on average, six exposures to your brand (that’s you) for people to make an association to you. That means you need to come across people’s eyes frequently, with consistency, and over time. Which is great in theory, right? But if you’re anything like me, you get busy doing the actual “practice” part of private practice, and the business-growing-stuff takes a back burner. Great SEO will help carry your practice website when you aren’t actively marketing, but the key to a vibrant referral network is relationship building. (Want to read more on SEO? See my blog article about SEO Hacks for Therapists.)
That stopped with me when I got organized about my systems and discovered a visual organizing tool called Trello. I admit, I first discovered Trello years ago and tried to implement it on my own but failed hard. So hard that I actually forgot I had a Trello account until I took a very helpful course that showed me how to use it. Then the lightbulb went off and I figured out how to use this tool to organize my practice.
When you have a tool in place that provides you structure and reminders of routines–and let’s you build the routines that are perfect for your unique situations–it’s off to the races. You’re not constantly reinventing the wheel but following a carefully crafted marketing plan.
I’m so passioante about how I use this tool that I’ve created a workshop that will show you how to get started in Trello, how to conceptualize the use of boards, lists and cards, and how to customize this for my favorite practice uses: tracking caseloads, tracking relationships for marketing, networking, and referral purposes, managing repetitive daily and weekly tasks, and developing a frequently sourced information vault that will allow you–or your admin–to easily run your business. I’m also giving workshop attendees my top 5 board templates that you can easily customize to be up and running immediately.
Want in? The 90-minute workshop is priced low at $40 because I want everyone who’s interested to be able to access it. I’ll also offer a video replay for review or for those who can’t make it live. The course is June 1 so get on this now and reserve your spot as I have limited space for the live presentaiton. Hope to see you there! Get more details:
